Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was born in York, England, in 1907. He is considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century. He was raised in Birmingham and educated at Gresham’s School, Holt and Christ Church, Oxford. He died in Vienna in 1973.

奥登 (1907-1973) 1907年生于英国约克镇。他被认为是20世纪最伟大的英国诗人。其主要诗集有《短诗集1927-1957》、《长诗集》等。他1973年于维也纳去世。

绿音，原名韩怡丹。生于中国福建。国际笔会美国中心会员，曾任记者、编辑数年。著有诗集《临风而立》（1993）、《绿音诗选》（2004，中英双语诗集），参与编著中国第一部《辞章学辞典》（2000）以及四本中国古诗文评点译析导读书籍。2004年12月在美创办“诗天空” poetrysky.com——全球首家中英诗歌双语网站，任《诗天空》双语季刊主编。她的上百首中文诗作散见于《诗刊》、《星星诗刊》、《创世纪》等海内外报刊及诗选中，英文诗发表于美国《普罗维登斯报》、《科罗拉多评论》等。其诗作曾在中美获多项诗创作奖。自2002年她移居美国罗得岛州普罗维登斯。

Yidan Han is the author of two books of poetry Standing against the Wind (1993) and Selected Poems of Green Voice (2004, bilingual). She is a coauthor of the first Dictionary of Rhetoric (2000) in China and other four academic books in expounding classical Chinese poetry. She grew up in Fujian, China and has been using Green Voice as her pen name to publish her Chinese poems since 1985. Her Chinese and English poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies in China, United States, Singapore and the Philippines, including The Providence Journal, Colorado Review, Shi Kan, The Epoch Poetry Quarterly, and she has received a number of poetry awards in China and the US. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of poetrysky.com and the bilingual poetry quarterly Poetry Sky. She is a member of International Pen—American Center (Pen.org) and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Musée des Beaux Arts

美术馆

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

                            1938/1939, 1940
			

关于苦难他们总是很清楚的，
这些古典画家：他们深知苦难在
人心中的地位。深知苦难会降临
当他人在吃饭，在开窗，或
正作着无聊的散步的时候；
甚至当长者热烈地、虔敬地等候
奇迹降临时，总有孩子们
并不特别期待它发生，而却在
树林边缘的池塘上溜着冰。
他们从不忘记：
即使可怕的殉道也终归会完结
在一个角落，混乱不堪的地方，
在那里狗继续过着狗的生涯，而迫害者的马
在树上摩擦其纯洁的臀部。

如在勃鲁盖尔的《伊卡鲁斯》中，
一切是如此悠然地从那灾难里转过脸：
农夫或许听到了堕水的声音和那绝望的呼喊，
但对于他，那不是严重的失败；太阳依旧
照着沉入绿波的白腿里；
那豪华精巧的船必曾看见
一件怪事，一个男孩自天而降，
但它要前往某地，仍静静地航行。

                          1938/1939, 1940